Full Pundit: Pamela Wallin ruins it for everyone

Full Pundit: Pamela Wallin ruins it for everyone

Rollin’ back to SaskatoonIn mixing “politics and ‘Senate business'” Pamela Wallin was doing “no more or less than some senators have been doing from Senate time immemorial — and still do,” TheGlobe and Mail‘s Jeffrey Simpson assures us. “The minute you thread the needle as to what is partisan and what is not for people appointed to an overtly political body, the eye of that needle gets very narrow indeed.”

That metaphor makes no sense at all, but you get Simpson’s mildly sympathetic drift. Easterners don’t understand “how inconvenient it is to travel on a direct flight from that province to Ottawa, for the simple reason that no such flights exist,” he says. (This is a myth, for the record. In total Air Canada operates seven non-stop flights a week from Ottawa to Saskatoon and Regina, which are basically equidistant from Wadena. And Westjet flies direct to Regina every single day, with a stop in Toronto, leaving at a Senator-appropriate 5 p.m.) Nevertheless, Simpson predicts that everyone will forget that “the auditors dismissed claims that she had falsified or misrepresented her housing allowances,” and ” raised no concerns about 73% of her travel.” (C’mon people, that’s like a B average!) And now Wallin will be “likely be hanged and quartered in the court of public opinion.”

Do y’all hear violins? We hear violins.

The larger issue, says Postmedia’s Michael Den Tandt, concerns Wallin’s contention that Senator David Tkachuk, former chair of the internal economy committee, told her he would have approved all but one or two of the expenses deemed dodgy by the Deloitte auditors. “Tkachuk flatly denies that. No surprise, there,” writes Den Tandt: “Wallin’s claim is the political equivalent of a drive-by shooting, suggesting that, far from being an outrider, she was adhering to established practice.” In his view, that question calls for a “broader, deeper examination of Senate spending, and beyond that of the relationship between political parties, fundraising, their use of public resources, and public institutions.” Indeed.

The Saskatoon StarPhoenix‘s editorialists describe Tuesday as a “dark day” for Saskatchewan, not least because of Wallin’s “spat” with fellow Saskatchewanian Tkachuk. “Whatever role the upper chamber plays in Canadian governance — Premier Brad Wall seems to believe it’s very little ­— these two Conservative appointees have diminished this province’s influence in the red chamber,” they write.

“The root problem is an honour system for a political class that can no longer be relied upon to act honourably,” the National Post‘s John Ivison writes. “Trust and flexibility” ought to be afforded Senators, as he says — some events are difficult to classify strictly as “Senate business” or “not Senate business. “But that trust has been breached by more than one errant senator,” as Ivison says, and all will now have to pay the price. Luckily, the “price” is simply behaving in a reasonable, forthright and honest fashion.

We find efforts to park this all at Stephen Harper’s doorstep a bit wearisome. He certainly embarrassed himself by charging initially to the embattled Senators’ defence (and to Nigel Wright’s), as the Toronto Star‘s editorialists say. But Duffy and Wallin were perfectly conventional choices, not “dubious” ones as the Star describes them. There was no reason to expect either of them to behave more scandalously than any other Senator. (Patrick Brazeau, on the other hand…)

But Huffington Post‘s Marni Soupcoff makes a good point: When Harper finally threw in the towel and decided to fill Senate vacancies, he didn’thave to make conventional choices — “high-profile journalists, insiders, cognoscente, people accustomed to healthy six-digit salaries, attention, and comfortable lives,” as Soupcoff describes them, plus “a bunch of long-time party loyalists and fundraisers, former and current politicians, lawyers, and super-rich folks.” People who feel entitled to their entitlements, in other words. We’re not sure we like Soupcoff’s idea of Harper appointing “59 nobodies”; but surely there was a happy medium to be found.

“I was prepared to believe Wallin had been blindsided by an extended audit in which her older spending was subjected to newer rules, that she was indeed an

‘activist’ senator operating in grey area in what constituted Senate business,” the Star‘s Tim Harper writes. “But after wading through the Deloitte study, one can only conclude that Wallin has buried herself and potentially eclipsed a lifetime of accomplishments under the weight of hubris and entitlement.”

Duly notedThe Post‘s Matt Gurney mounts an excellent defence of what he calls “cottaging” — we prefer the term “cottage life,” so as to avoid fits of childish giggling — against grumpy old Jonathan Kay‘s spurious allegations. He also thinks Toronto’s Taste of the Danforth festival is a pointless, claustrophobic ordeal, which is the correct opinion.

The Star‘s Heather Mallick imagines how many lives might be saved if people in need of a chemical release turned to marijuana instead of alcohol.

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